But then text started to appear.
“Why are you still looking for us?”
I stared at those words and felt a knife of panic stab through me.
I tried typing back. “Who are you?”
A few seconds later, another message. “We’ve been watching you. We know what’s going on.”
I could barely breathe. This was exactly what Rafa had warned me about, and now it was happening. I didn’t know who was messaging me, but I had to assume it was the mafia.
They knew I had broken the rules. They knew I was looking for the Spiders still, despite the fact that Rafa had told me to lie low.
I nearly got up and ran away.
Instead, I typed another message. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“We are the Spiders. We want you to stop looking for us.”
I took a sharp breath. It wasn’t the mafia after all.
It was the freaking Spiders, the people I so desperately wanted to talk to.
“Why are you watching me?”
“Because the mafia wants you dead, and we don’t like when the mafia hurts women.”
“That’s what Dasha said.”
“Dasha was a good fighter. We are angry about what happened to her.”
I couldn’t believe what I was doing.
This was probably the worst possible idea imaginable. I should throw the laptop out the window and pretend like I had never gotten these messages. I should set it on fire and play dumb.
But I couldn’t. Dasha had died for the Spiders. Maybe she gave me up, and I was a little upset about that, but still. She died for the cause she believed in. I was too afraid to even take a single risk for that same cause.
I wasn’t Dasha, and I wasn’t some freedom fighter. I was just a regular girl who had gotten way in over her head. I wasn’t anything special, and I was so afraid that I would be lost forever if I keep pushing my luck.
But they had contacted me. They came to me. I couldn’t turn this opportunity down. So many journalists would kill for this chance.
“I’m angry too,” I typed. “I hate what they’re doing in this city.”
“We’re sorry she put you in danger. We don’t know what she was thinking. But you are in danger, Cassidy.”
“I know. What do I do?”
“We can protect you. We can help. Come to us.”
“Come to you?
“Yes. We can protect you.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“We are the Spiders. We are women like Dasha.”
“I don’t trust you. Dasha got me into this mess.”
“We don’t blame you for not trusting us, but you are being watched. We can help you.”
I bit my lip, confused. I didn’t know what to do in this situation.
On the one hand, yes, the Spiders seemed like they were fighting on the good side. They were freeing women and fighting against the mafia.
But Dasha did give me up. Dasha was the one who put me in this position to begin with. Maybe I agreed with what they wanted, but I definitely wasn’t happy with what they had done to me.
Now they wanted to protect me, but how could I know if this was for real? The only person to actually do anything for me so far was Rafa. The Spiders may have been on the right side, but Rafa was actually coming to me and trying to protect me. The Spiders were only sending me some random, creepy message through my laptop.
I couldn’t trust them. I knew that deep down, as much as I wanted to trust them. I couldn’t believe in anyone right now, except for maybe Rafa, but even he was questionable.
“I can’t,” I said.
“We must go. They’re watching you, Cassidy. If you change your mind, tie a red bandana to the fence at the corner of South Wales and Arch streets. Goodbye.”
And then my computer returned to normal like nothing had happened.
I quickly closed my tabs and slammed the lid shut, my heart pounding.
I could leave them a message now if I needed to. I wasn’t going to do anything about it right away, but it was a slight relief knowing that I had the real option.
They had kept saying I was being watched, over and over again. Of everything, that scared me the most.
Because I didn’t know what they meant. Was the mafia watching, or were they?
And which one was worse?
That message only made things more complicated. They hadn’t fixed a single thing by sending me those messages. Now I was more stressed and confused than I had been before, and I didn’t even think that was possible.
Not only did the mafia want to kill me, but now I was actively being watched by the Spiders as well. They could easily take over my computer, so who knew what else they could do.
They were dangerous. I was sure of that.
My life was at stake here, and I had nowhere to turn. Rafa’s wicked grin came back to me, and I wished all over again that he hadn’t left me alone.